Joseph Cornell Study Center Processing Project

By Anna Rimel

Joseph Cornell with Book Object, circa 1940

In the summer of 2017, I began work as the archivist of the Joseph Cornell Study Center collection in the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). My task, to put it simply, was to arrange, describe, and make accessible a room full of the studio contents, personal and family papers, and library and record collection of collage artist and avant-garde filmmaker Joseph Cornell (1903-1972).

Joseph Cornell's Basement Studio. Photographed by Terry Schutte.

Working primarily from his basement studio at home in Queens, New York – a home that he shared with his mother and brother for their whole lives – he collected a wide range of materials that he would store in cardboard boxes or cigar boxes. Images clipped from magazines, articles from newspapers, and scattered notes often resided in overstuffed folders or in stacks along various surfaces of his studio.

My first task was to familiarize myself with the history of the collection and how it came to be at SAAM – no small task, since the collection began with a donation from Joseph Cornell's sister, Elizabeth Cornell Benton, in 1978, along with several additional donations and transfers of personal materials into the 1990s. A veritable treasure trove of material giving insights and contextual clues to Joseph Cornell's work and life, the collection has been available to visiting researchers and previously included in comprehensive exhibitions and publications on the artist. But access was previously limited by the extreme extent and variety of the materials and the lack of a complete finding aid (an organizational document providing description of contents and contextual information) to the collection.

The next step was to familiarize myself with the physical materials, the extent of groups or types of material, and determine if the creator of the collection, Joseph Cornell, had any organizational systems in place and maintain those systems. I also needed to determine if there were any conservation or preservation concerns, which ultimately required going through all of the items in the collection to make a preliminary assessment.

An array of damaged negatives found in the Joseph Cornell Study Center during processing. Photograph by Anna Rimel, 2019.

An example of a rusted paperclip found in the Joseph Cornell Study Center collection during processing. Photograph by Anna Rimel, 2019.

As most gatherers of things are aware, materials kept in basements and attics where temperatures and humidity tend to fluctuate, are often more at risk for mold, rust, and pests. Since the collection has been in a climate-controlled space for upwards of 40 years, any discovered damage was likely due to the materials themselves degrading. For example, archivists are generally averse to keeping old paper clips in collections because these tend to rust and damage paper, and this was no exception for this collection. Also, in a collection like this it is not unusual to discover unstable film and paper materials, such as old newspapers and newsprint or nitrate and acetate film negatives.

Acetate film negatives were introduced in the 1930s and the popular film negative used until the more stable polyester film was introduced in circa 1960. Acetate negatives, after a number of years and depending on their storage conditions, can break down and off-gas, becoming a risk to materials stored near them, and negatives can warp and wrinkle, rendering the image inaccessible. Newspaper, inherently unstable and acidic, becomes brittle over time.

These materials need special housing considerations and take more measured and planned approaches as other processing and arrangement work continues. The extent of this type of material, material that needed more attention and care, turned out to be much more than originally anticipated, causing me to necessarily adjust workflows and timelines. 

Joseph Cornell's source material box of "Mouse Material" in the Joseph Cornell Study Center. Photograph by Anna Rimel, 2018.

But my work hasn't been all rusty paperclips and brittle pages. One of the most interesting aspects of Joseph Cornell's life has been how nostalgic he appeared to be about so many things. He might be having a good day, taking a walk, and find a rusty bit of metal or a pull tab from a soda can. He would pick up that found bit and attempt to capture that good day by scrawling a little note, or a date and a word, and fold it around that bit of metal. These were the constant surprises of the collection, in addition to whimsically labeled boxes of other stuff – "Mouse Material" being one of my favorites. Much to my relief, this box doesn't actually contain mouse fur, but what appears to be gathered dust or lint from a vacuum.

While working through what amounts to Joseph Cornell's life and a kind of fractured story of his artwork and ideas, there's a certain urge to create groups of material based on known works of art. This urge simply comes from wanting to understand Cornell's mind and present a body of material that makes sense to outside eyes. However, the work of an archivist is not to contrive groups of material or force things to fit into our need for order, it is to understand the original intent behind a stack of paper, given contextual clues, folder titles, or material type. With Cornell, the complexity of a found objects artist combined with an individual who nostalgically collected and gathered so much, this work was often like untangling an especially knotted bundle of chain jewelry. For me, this meant that I never decided a group of material was about any one thing unless explicitly stated through labels and notes by Cornell himself. Oftentimes, a group of material was about more than one thing, idea, person, memory, etc.

Understanding this, my next step, apart from reading extensively about Joseph Cornell, was to come up with a planned arrangement for the collection. With a collection numbering hundreds of boxes, a planned outline is necessary to make the work doable. Having gone through the collection and available inventories, I could estimate which boxes would include which kind of material, according to my arrangement, and approach the collection work in this way. Of course, with all great plans comes the possibility for adjustments along the way, and that is part of the work as well. Having tackled the overall high-level approach to the collection, I then spent the next several years working through each item – unfolding notes, removing paper clips and staples, removing materials from envelopes, interleaving acidic documents with archival paper to extend the life of the material, and properly housing everything in new, acid-free and lignin-free folders and boxes. I began with the paper-based documents, which made up a large part of the collection. My approach was to think of the collection as large groups of material: with the paper-based materials as one group, including photographs, prints, magazines, letters, financial records diaries, etc.; the three-dimensional objects that require special housing considerations and a different approach, as another part of the collection; the library collection of hundreds of boxed books with notes and annotations, as another part; and the record album collection as another part. Each of these larger groups has been described in the same comprehensive finding aid to the collection, but housing and planned physical approach differs for each type of material.

Shifting work in progress as files of material are placed in their appropriate locations. Photograph by Anna Rimel, 2019.

Going forward, further work can be done to physically get the collection to where it needs to be, but the collection now has a publicly accessible, comprehensive description in the form of the finding aid, which is a big step towards accessibility and findability of such a significant, unique collection of an important American artist.

To learn more about the Joseph Cornell Study Center collection at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, please visit https://americanart.si.edu/research/cornell

To view the finding aid to the collection, please visit https://sova.si.edu/record/SAAM.JCSC.1

Anna Rimel, Joseph Cornell Study Center Archivist, Smithsonian American Art Museum

"Discovering Yayoi Kusama's Watercolors"

by Anna Rimel, Archivist for the Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

(Figure 1) Yayoi Kusama, (from left to right) "Autumn," 1953 (2019.32.1); "Deep Grief," 1954 (2019.32.2); "Fire," circa 1954 (2019.32.3); "Forlorn Spot," 1953 (2019.32.4), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John A. Benton and The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation

Hired as the Archivist for the Joseph Cornell Study Center in 2017, with generous funding from the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, I have been working steadily through hundreds of linear feet of artist Joseph Cornell's two- and three-dimensional source material, family and estate papers, and collected artifacts and ephemera. The collection also includes a collection of over 150 record albums, and a personal library and book collection of over 2500 titles.

In 1978, the Joseph Cornell Study Center was founded with a donation from Joseph Cornell's sister and brother-in-law, Elizabeth Cornell Benton and John A. Benton, to the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). There were several subsequent donations from his estate, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, further donations from Elizabeth Cornell and John A. Benton, and transfers from other Smithsonian repositories, which make up the Joseph Cornell Study Center collection today.

Though the project to archivally process the collection is still in progress, and a partial finding aid forthcoming, an exciting discovery has been making its way through the art world. In the process of conducting a preliminary survey of all contents of the collection, four small watercolors[i] by Yayoi Kusama were found still in the original Manila envelope, alongside the receipt for purchase by Joseph Cornell from Kusama for $200 on August 22, 1964. Upon notifying curatorial staff, Melisa Ho, SAAM's curator of 20th-century art, was vocal in getting the delicate watercolors accessioned into SAAM's permanent collections, which previously held no works by Kusama." Rendered in watercolor, ink, pastel, and tempera paint," Melissa Ho explained that these works, created in the mid-fifties, "represent a crucial body of work that bridged Kusama's transition from Japan to the United States."[ii] In a blog post for the museum on December 17, 2019, she continues to write: "They were among the roughly 2,000 works on paper Kusama brought with her when she left Japan in 1957, hoping to sell them to support herself."[iii]

(Figure 2)"Surrealisme" (1932) exhibition announcement.

Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) was an artist known primarily for his assemblage box constructions, who also created two-dimensional collages and avant-garde films. He had two younger sisters, Helen and Elizabeth, who married and lived on Long Island. Joseph lived with his younger brother, Robert, and his mother, Helen, in Queens, New York, from 1921 until their deaths in 1965 and 1966, respectively. He would remain in the same home on Utopia Parkway until his death in 1972. Initially thought to be somewhat reclusive, the artist is now known to have had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the art world. His first exhibition was a group show at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932, "Surréalisme," alongside artists Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, and Pierre Roy, for which Cornell also designed the announcement.[iv]

Cornell met artist Yayoi Kusama in early 1964, introduced by art dealer Gertrude Stein when he expressed a desire to learn to draw and asked Stein to bring him models to sketch. A number of these sketches apparently survive among her papers.[v] After sketching Kusama, they appear to have formed a bond, and continued to meet and correspond.

Other Kusama-related materials, including letters with sentiments like, "You and Me – Birds of a Feather,"[vi] as well as numerous photographs of Kusama, still remain within the Joseph Cornell Study Center collection.

(Figure 3) Letter from Yayoi Kusama to Joseph Cornell, circa 1972.

Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The collection remains open to researchers, and more information can be found on the Joseph Cornell Study Center website, at https://americanart.si.edu/research/cornell.

 

[Cross-posted in the Society of American Archivists' Museum Archivist: Newsletter of the Museum Archives Section (Winter 2020: Volume 30, Number 1) https://www2.archivists.org/groups/museum-archives-section/newsletter-archives]

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[i] See (Figure 1).

[ii] Melissa Ho, "The Lost Kusamas." Eye Level (blog), Smithsonian American Art Museum, December 17, 2019. https://americanart.si.edu/blog/lost-kusamas.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Deborah Solomon, Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell (New York: Other Press, 1997), 87.; See (Figure 2).

[v] Deborah Solomon, Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell (New York: Other Press, 1997), 380-381.

[vi] See (Figure 3).

Recent discovery of four of Yayoi Kusama's watercolors!

Check out this blog from the Smithsonian American Art Museum about Archivist Anna Rimel's exciting discovery of four watercolors by famed artist Yayoi Kusama!

Yayoi Kusama, Fire, ca. 1954, watercolor, pastel, ink, tempera on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John A. Benton and The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, 2019.32.3

The Archivist as Marathoner

Paul Juley, Peter A. Juley’s partner and son, in their photography studio. Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum.  

The Juleys ran the most successful fine arts photography firm in New York from 1906 to 1975. Their clients included major artists, galleries, museums and private collectors. The collection provides a unique record of 20^th century art; sometimes the Juley photograph is the only visual documentation of altered, damaged or lost works.

In 1996, shortly after the Summer Olympic Games closed in Atlanta, Rachel Allen, the head of the Research and Scholars Center, wrote the following to describe the role of archivists in their organizations.

We are the distance runners. We are the keepers of the catalogues, the archivists, the librarians. We are the marathoners of the museum. Ours is not the race quickly won. Our work is measured by accumulation in thousands of records, numbers of books, linear shelf feet, and sometimes even the size of the backlog. Ours is to collect and catalogue, to compile and classify, to manage and preserve. We measure not in miles but in years, and decades, and generations. The finish line remains on an ever-distant horizon.

This "marathoner's refrain" formed part of an American Art article announcing the completion of printing archival study photographs for all 127,000 negatives in the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection. The effort to print every negative in the Juley Collection was tremendous, but it was just one of several hurdles archives staff had to overcome in the quest to make the collection accessible. Before printing began, museum staff moved the collection from Juley’s New York studio to Washington, D.C. Next, they faced urgent preservation issues such as deteriorating nitrate negatives and fragile glass negatives. Additional challenges included numbering the negatives, documenting the notations on the original negative sleeves and developing a computer system to store the collected data. At times progress seemed slow or paused due to lack of resources, but the knowledge that they were working on a collection of high historical kept the team moving forward. Allen’s metaphor describes this consideration of current and future students and scholars: 

Like the ancient courier Pheidippides, who ran from Athens to Sparta to seek help against the Persians, we to are messengers. We preserve the pieces of history -- the letters, photographs, bits of data, and ephemera -- and pass them on, from one generation to the next. Our work endures over time.

William Zorach in his studio, at work on the full-size clay model for The New State of Texas, photographed by Paul Juley.  Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The Juley Collection holds more than 4,700 portraits of artists. The Juleys’s portraits have been reproduced in many exhibitions and publications, providing insight into the artists lives and artistic practices.

Work in the Juley Collection continues today. Archives staff and interns are researching the Juley photographs to identify the artworks depicted and expand the preliminary records. We are also digitizing the Juley images to make the collection more accessible. Although the finish line for these tasks seems far away, we have the example of the archivists who came before us, who set a goal and kept moving to achieve it.

Rockwell Kent, The Wall Street Runner, photographed by Peter A. Juley & Son. Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum. 
The Juley number assigned and inscribed by archive staff is visible in the upper left-hand corner. 

For more about the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, visit the Photograph Archives website at https://americanart.si.edu/research/photograph-archives or read the following articles:

"The Marathoner’s Refrain" by Rachel Allen in American Art, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Autumn, 1996), 76-82.

"A Photographic File Covers 80 Years of Our Artistic History," by George Kittle in Smithsonian, Vol. 13, no. 12 (March 1983), 114-124.

Alida Brady
Photograph Archives Coordinator
Smithsonian American Art Museum

Joseph Cornell: In Celebration of National Poetry Day

Joseph Cornell, circa 1940. Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Joseph Cornell, artist, filmmaker, collector, and appreciator of nostalgic remnants of the past, was an avid lover of poetry. His love for words is evidenced in the Joseph Cornell Study Center collection, where his personal library is made up of at least 246 titles devoted to poetry.

Emily Dickinson was a particular favorite, and Cornell owned 15 titles by and about her.

Selection of books by and about Emily Dickinson from Joseph Cornell's personal library.
Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

In 1951, Cornell's mother, Helen Storms Cornell, sent him a postcard featuring Emily Dickinson's home in Amherst, Massachusetts. 

Postcard of Emily Dickinson's House sent to Joseph Cornell by his mother, Helen Storms Cornell, October 16, 1951 (front).
Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum 

Postcard of Emily Dickinson's House sent to Joseph Cornell by his mother, Helen Storms Cornell, October 16, 1951 (back).
Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

On the postcard, she writes:

"October 16th
Dear Joe, We drove by here today also by home where Eugene Field lived and all around University of Mass - and Amherst. Such beautiful places. Oak meeting today. Tomorrow we go to Grace's to lunch - 60 mile drive each way - what weather! Love Mother"

While Cornell held a deep appreciation for poets long passed, he was also friends with a number of

living poets. 

Among them, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Marianne Moore, with whom he corresponded for a number of years. Moore often included animal imagery in her poetry, and Cornell sent little animal-featured gifts, for which Moore is clearly grateful in the letters that follow.

Letter from Marianne Moore to Joseph Cornell, March 26, 1943.
Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Letter from Marianne Moore to Joseph Cornell, March 13, 1962.
Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Another poet with whom Cornell often corresponded, was Nobel Prize winning poet, Octavio Paz and his wife Marie-José.

Postcard from Marie-José Paz, October 8, 1972 (front)
Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Postcard from Marie José Paz, October 8, 1972 (back)
Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Marie-José writes:

"Mexico le 8 Octobre 1972
 Cher Joseph CornellVoici les substances de vous les Alchimistes. We miss you! Will you come to MexicoAffectueuses pensées, Love Marie Jo Paz"

A poetry booklet by Octavio Paz was inscribed to Cornell:

Poetry booklet by Octavio Paz, Return, sent to Joseph Cornell, with interior inscription, undated.
Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

The inscription to reads:

"A Joseph Cornell, mastro del agua, el fuego - la mar, Con amistad, Ocatvio Paz"

Though few letters sent by Cornell remain within the collection, the below small Rorschach ink drawings and note were sent by Cornell to Octavio Paz.

Rorschach and note sent to Octavio Paz by Joseph Cornell, undated.
Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Cornell was also friends with American poet, author, and filmmaker, Parker Tyler. 

Letter from Parker Tyler to Joseph Cornell, March 22, c. 1939.
Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

In the above letter, Tyler discusses one of Cornell's unrealized film scenarios, Monsieur Phot (1933), and likens it to "an elaborate lyrical poem in cinema." 

From Joseph Cornell's personal library, the below book of poetry by Parker Tyler, The Metaphor in the Jungle, was inscribed by Tyler:

The Metaphor in the Jungle, book by Parker Tyler, from Joseph Cornell's personal library.
Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Inscription to Joseph Cornell from Parker Tyler, in book: The Metaphor in the Jungle by Parker Tyler.
Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum 

The inscription reads:

"For Joseph Cornell: the Benvenuto Cellini of Flotsam and Jetsam: from: Parker Tyler, Jan. 18, 1941."

In addition to assembling works of art from found and collected items, Cornell amassed a studio full of collected source materials to select from. The below photograph from the Study Center is just a glimpse of the "Flotsam" Cornell acquired over the course of his life. 

Joseph Cornell's source material box, "Flotsam #1".
Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Joseph Cornell Study Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum is currently in the midst of a multi-year processing project to preserve, process, and provide access to the artist's studio and source materials, as well as a selection of his personal and family papers, personal library, and record album collection. To learn more, visit the Joseph Cornell Study Center website at https://americanart.si.edu/research/cornell for updates and contact details. 

Anna Rimel

Archivist, Joseph Cornell Study Center

Smithsonian American Art Museum

John Singer Sargent at the Smithsonian

Lately I've been working on updating the listings of works by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) in the Inventory of American Paintings, an online database that records the last known locations of American works of art.  As I was working on this project I wondered: What else is in the Smithsonian that is related to Sargent?  We often become so focused on our own work in the rush to get so much done in so little time, that we forget to widen our view a little bit further and see the magnitude of resources available at the Smithsonian.

It turns out that Sargent is one of the most widely represented artists across the Smithsonian, as well as one of the most popular and well-known American artists. (He was born to American parents, but spent most of his life in Europe.)  His paintings are in four Smithsonian collections: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, National Portrait Gallery, and Freer Gallery of Art. 

There have been many exhibitions and monographs about Sargent, which can be found in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, including six volumes of the more recent Complete Paintings by the artist's great-nephew Richard Ormond, and Elaine Kilmurray. One of the more interesting books (in my opinion) is a novel written by Countess Eleanor Palffy in 1951: The lady and the painter: an extravaganza, based on incidents in the lives of the two principal characters: Mrs. John Lowell Gardner of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the artist, John Singer Sargent. I used Proquest (available on site at Smithsonian Libraries) to look up reviews of the book and, my oh my, it caused quite the scandal in its day.

Over 2000 paintings and 53 sculptures by Sargent are listed in the Inventories of American Painting & Sculpture. These works are in public and private collections around the world.  Did you know that Sargent, who is most well-known for his paintings, in particular his portraits, was also a sculptor? Many of these are plaster studies for his ceiling reliefs in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  Also, about 1700 paintings are listed in the Catalog of American Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery.

You can also find Sargent in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Photograph Archives, both as an artist and as a subject. Of note is a photograph of the "John Singer Sargent medal" by Paul Manship, photographed by De Witt Ward. The inscription on the reverse reads "Pegasus Liberated. J.M. to J.S.S. 1923."

Finally, the Archives of American Art contains the letters of Sargent and photographs, all of which are digitized and available to view online. Take a look for yourself, though I must admit, I have trouble reading his handwriting!

Now that is a lot of resources!  I had fun looking for them. Did you know that you, too, can search for items across the Smithsonian museums?  Just click on Collections Search Center and begin your journey!

Pictured, top to bottom:


John Singer Sargent, Marble Fountain in Italy, ca. 1907. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.108


John Singer Sargent, Isabella Stewart Gardner, 1888. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.


Paul Manship, Medal for John Singer Sargent, 1923, photographed by De Witt Ward. American Sculpture Photograph Study Collection, Photograph Archives, Smithsonian American Art Museum.


--Nicole Semenchuk, Research and Scholars Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum